Not long afterwards, Tzu-ch'i sent his son K'un on an errand to the state of Yen, and along the way he was seized by bandits. They considered that he would be difficult to sell as a slave in his present state, but that if they cut off his feet they could dispose of him easily. Accordingly they cut off his feet and sold him in the state of Ch'i. As it happened, he was made gatekeeper of the inner chamber in the palace of Duke K'ang, and so was able to eat meat until the end of his days.~ Burton Watson translation ~

The twist in this tale (most of which was featured yesterday) simply points to the fact that what we expect is not always what we get! Try as we might, we often misread the tea leaves.

As the type of person who needs routine, the process of moving from one residence to another (in different towns to boot!) has been very disorienting for me. I diligently have tried to replicate my former routines here, but many variables have changed which makes an accurate replication near too impossible. So, I'm kind of flailing around right now.

I'm sure you've noticed that I've been posting less. The main reason is that I'm suffering through a mental writing block. I have ideas and notions I wish to share, but with my routines so messed up, I just haven't been in a writing mood.

Actually, it goes even deeper than that. In South Bend, I would spend hours per day reading news and commentary -- I would share a portion of what I read in the form of blog posts. Since coming to Ocean Shores, I have hardly paid ANY attention to what is going on in the world. Instead of spending hours in front of my computer monitor, I have been engaged in an activity that is better for my overall health: walking.

My goal is to take Jaz (the big dog) to the beach twice per day for a run. She enjoyed far more freedom in South Bend than here and so two daily runs off leash is my attempt to mitigate the circumstance. Jaz seems to enjoy the off leash time with the big goofy guy and the big goofy guy (me) has noticed he is getting a lot more exercise than he is used to. I feel both better and worse because of it.

I just hope I can reestablish my bearings soon. I still feel quite lost.

The circulation of the light is not only a circulation of the seed-blossom of the individual body, but it is even a circulation of the true, creative, formative energies. It is not a momentary fantasy, but the exhaustion of the cycle (soul-migration) of all the aeons. Therefore the duration of a breath means a year according to human reckoning and a hundred years measured by the long night of the nine paths (of reincarnation).

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

One way of understanding the received Laozi (and by inference, something of Zhuangzi) is to get a clearer picture of what its teaching is not and that to which it was in response. Ziporyn (Ironies of Sameness and Difference) does this in part by comparing it with its contemporary, the Neiye ("Inner Training"), which not only preceded our received Laozi and Zhuangzi's Inner Chapters, but continues to flourish even to this day.

(As a parenthetical note, this negative comparison is not intended to denigrate Neiye Daoism, but simply to make clear that they are not, to my thinking, the same. [And if they are the same, as they could possibly be (for this too comes down to a matter of personal perspective), then let it be known that I choose to make use of Zhuangzi in this particular, radically religion-eschewing way.] In the final analysis, again to my thinking, since no eternal outcomes are at stake, it is only temporal outcomes that matter; thus, if Neiye Daoism delivers the goods to its practitioners, then more power to them.)

We will move on from this comparison of Laozi and Zhuangzi's ironic disposition with that of the non-ironic Neiye in the posts that follow. Here, however, one more example of their differences is particularly instructive. "The Dao is not far away; it is by attaining it that people are born. . . . It is what people lose when they die, and what they obtain to live; it is what things lose when they fail, and what they obtain in order to succeed." This is clearly a metaphysical Dao. Though we cannot "know" it, we can "attain" it by other means (psychophysical exercise and emptying the mind, which I have referenced previously, but have omitted here). This definitive Dao is alien to philosophical Daoism, but it is the idea that it is lost in death and failure that is most telling in terms of its lack of an ironic negation of positive values.

In Zhuangzi, "failure 'succeeds in failing' by virtue of Dao" (Ziporyn). Like life and death, success and failure form a single string; we are in no position to define one as better than the other, or even to truly understand which is which. In Zhuangzi, Dao is that perspective which embraces these polar opposites and understands their larger coherence in the equality of our assessment of things. Here, in the Neiye, Dao is a positive, and apparently objective, force that can be "lost", whereas in Zhuangzi, it embraces every eventuality. In the case of the former, this leads to a religious pursuit of the realization of a force by which to overcome death (the pursuit of immortality) and to achieve ‘success’. In the case of Zhuangzi, with the world hid in the world, nothing can ever be ‘lost’ and “there is no success like failure, though failure is no success at all” (Dylan).

Tzu-ch'i had eight sons and, lining them up in front of him, he summoned Chiu-fang Yin and said, "Please physiognomize my sons for me and tell me which one is destined for good fortune."

Chiu-fang Yin replied, "K'un - he is the one who will be fortunate."

Tzu-ch'i, both astonished and pleased, said, "How so?"

"K'un will eat the same food as the lord of a kingdom, and will continue to do so to the end of his days."

Tears sprang from Tzu-ch'i's eyes, and in great dejection he said, "Why should my boy be brought to this extreme?"

"He who eats the same food as the ruler of a kingdom will bring bounty to all his three sets of relatives, not to mention his own father and mother," said Chiu-fang Yin. "Yet now when you hear of this, Sir, you burst out crying - this will only drive the blessing away! The son is auspicious enough, but the father is decidedly inauspicious!"

Tzu-ch’i said, “Yin, what would you know about this sort of thing! You say K’un will be fortunate – but you are speaking solely of the meat and wine that are to affect his nose and mouth. How could you understand where such things come from! Suppose, although I have never been a shepherd, a flock of ewes were suddenly to appear in the southwest corner of my grounds; or that, although I have no taste for hunting, a covey of quail should suddenly appear in the southeast corner - if this were not to be considered peculiar, then what would be? When my son and I go wandering, we wander through Heaven and earth. He and I seek our delight in Heaven and our food from the earth. He and I do not engage in any undertakings, do not engage in any plots, do not engage in any peculiarities. He and I ride on the sincerity of Heaven and earth and do not allow things to set us at odds with it. He and I stroll and saunter in unity, but never do we try to do what is appropriate to the occasion. Now you tell me of this vulgar and worldly `reward' that is to come to him. As a rule, where there is some peculiar manifestation, there must invariably have been some peculiar deed to call it forth. But surely this cannot be due to any fault of my son and me - it must be inflicted by Heaven. It is for this reason that I weep!"~ Burton Watson translation ~

It is not uncommon to hear about the individual who craved fame and, once they obtained it, wished they had realized anything but. Fame, status and power certainly have their perks, but they have their downsides as well.

One of the great advantages to being financially impoverished is that you really can't get sucked up in a time-honored American spending orgy: Black Friday. Today millions of Americans got up at the crack of dawn to race to various stores to take advantage of big sales and massive discounts. Some of these purchases will be for items truly needed -- most of them won't. No, most purchases will be for worthless crap that will be forgotten about or tossed aside a few weeks after Christmas.

When we were still moderately poor, it was hard not to be pulled into the vortex of consumerism. We all are bombarded by imagery that suggests in the strongest terms possible that it is purchased things which define us to others and even ourselves. You can't be happy UNLESS you own one or more of the current "must have" products.

Yes, we continue to be peppered with this same vulgar message, but a certain level of poverty provides needed refuge from the "infection". Simply put, even if we wanted in on the feeding frenzy, we just don't have the money AND we refuse to buy on credit. While others are out wading their way through crowds of discount-mad fellow shoppers, we aren't going anywhere. Aside from dodging the occasional harried motorist, today will be a typical Friday.

In the midst of primal transformation, the radiance of the light (yang-kuang), is the determining thing. In the physical world it is the sun; in man, the eye. The radiation and dissipation of spiritual consciousness is chiefly brought about by this energy when it is directed outward (flows downward). Therefore the Way of the Golden Flower depends wholly on the backward-flowing method.

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

In the previous post we considered how, according to Ziporyn (Ironies of Sameness and Difference), one earlier version of the Laozi (the Guodian) evinces a sympathy for Confucianism in sharp contrast to our received version. This reflects a "pre-ironic proto-Daoism" while our received version presents an "ironic proto-Daoism", and is thus compatible with the philosophic outlook of the Neiye ("Inner Training"), a chapter of the Guanzi which was contemporary with it (some of its chapters being later contributions). This being the case, we can see how our received version of the Laozi, like the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi, represents a break with the 'trending' philosophy of its day. Some, though Ziporyn is more cautious on this point, understand this non-ironic Laozi and the Neiye as representatives of the "Huang-Lao Daoism" thought to have only come after Zhuangzi and is represented in a significant slice of the Zhuangzi. At minimum, we can see how they are similar in that they both default to a more conventional and religious, that is non-ironic, project of self-cultivation; this should not surprise us in as much as this is the natural inclination of the "understanding consciousness".

All this is offered here to make the case, my case, that the ironic philosophy of Zhuangzi is not just more of the same, but rather a unique and solitary island standing in the stream of non-ironic, religious daos. All these other daos seek to resolve the tenuous exigencies of human existence, whereas Zhuangzi ever embraces them. In this, it has a special kind of dynamism in that it ever self-critiques and self-negates; it lives with and in the questions and eschews all answers. It is, to my thinking, a more thoroughly existentialist response to the human experience than even the more contemporary philosophies that bear that name.

A dog is not considered superior merely because it is good at barking; a man is not considered worthy merely because he is good at speaking. Much less, then, is he to be considered great. That which has become great does not think it worth trying to become great, much less to become virtuous. Nothing possesses a larger measure of greatness than Heaven and earth, yet when have they ever gone in search of greatness? He who understands what it means to possess greatness does not seek, does not lose, does not reject, and does not change himself for the sake of things. He returns to himself and finds the inexhaustible; he follows antiquity and discovers the imperishable - this is the sincerity of the Great Man.~ Burton Watson translation ~

This is oh so true. Greatness is an attribute defined by others. It is something we bestow upon those who don't really give a wit as to what we think of them.

Since moving to Ocean Shores, I take Jaz to the beach every morning for exercise. On most days, we arrive at or just after sunrise. In most cases, no one else is on the beach -- at least within eyeshot. My dog chases seagulls or sticks that I toss into the surf. Me? I watch the waves ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Mesmerized.

A person can be a Taoist (or simply find symmetry in Taoist metaphors) anywhere at anytime, but it is so much easier at the beach! The concepts of transformation and ever returning are on display 24/7. The waves coming in quickly transform into the waves going out. While water constantly recedes toward the ocean, it concurrently always migrates toward land.

It is a symphony with no apparent beginning or end. From the standpoint of my singular life, the tides have been this way from before the time I was born and will remain so long after I die.

When I am on the beach, I am at peace. I understand the unknowable just a wee bit more than at any other time. Watching the rhythm of the waves, the words of the Taoist sages ring true...wordlessly.

Master Lu-tsu said, since when has the expression "circulation of the light" been revealed? It was revealed by the "True Men of the Beginning of Form" (Kuan Yin-hsi). When the light is made to move in a circle, all the energies of heaven and earth, of the light and the dark, are crystallized. That is what is termed seed-like thinking, or purification of the energy, or purification of the idea. When one begins to apply this magic it is as if, in the middle of being, there were non-being. When in the course of time the work is completed, and beyond the body there is a body, it is as if, in the middle of non-being, there were being. Only after concentrated work of a hundred days will the light be genuine, then only will it become spirit-fire. After a hundred days there develops by itself in the midst of the light a point of the true light-pole (yang). Then suddenly there develops the seed pearl. It is as if man and woman embraced and a conception took place. Then one must be quite still and wait. The circulation of the light is the epoch of fire.

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

I have long wished to see Brook Ziporyn apply his scholarship and insight to the Laozi (Daodejing = Tao De Ching) as he has to Zhuangzi and now I find that he has done so in his Ironies of Oneness and Difference: Coherence in Early Chinese Thought; Prolegomena to the Study of Li. As one might construe from the title, this is a tough read, and one which I can only take in small bites. I am unable to faithfully reconstruct his arguments regarding the Laozi and its place in the wider context of Chinese thought here (since they are complex and I don't fully understand them, in any case), but still there are aspects of those arguments which I can relate and hope to elaborate.

Ziporyn is careful, when quoting from or commenting on the Laozi, to specify that he does so with reference to the "received" Laozi in contrast to previous versions to which we have no or little access. This is because the book appears to be a compilation of traditional sayings compiled over a considerable amount of time and as such was susceptible to the whims of much editorial manipulation. In other words, it has been altered over time to make the case for various points of view. Our received version is thus just one more such manipulation and needn't be thought of as sacrosanct. Indeed, we might even take this as an invitation to engage in some editorial manipulation of our own (as in fact do some translators like Stephen Mitchell).

Among those bits of previous versions of the Laozi to which we do have some access are the Guodian fragments discovered in a tomb sealed around 300 B.C.E. These, Ziporyn tells us, reveal a "pre-ironic proto-Daoism" quite distinct from the "ironic proto-Daoism" of the received Laozi. (Ziporyn makes a pivotal distinction between the non-ironic—that which knows and tends toward a linear, active engagement with the world — and the ironic — that which does not know and tends toward a circular, ever self-critiquing and self-negating engagement with the world. The non-ironic does; the ironic does by non-doing. The non-ironic knows; the ironic knows by not-knowing. The non-ironic follows a definite Dao; the ironic follows a dao that is not Dao.)

One important indication of this non-ironic disposition is found in its obvious comfort with the Confucian pursuit of Benevolence and Righteousness. Whereas our received version of the Laozi sees their pursuit as an obstacle to their realization, the Guodian version endorses their active pursuit. Ziporyn suggests that the Guodian version reflects the contemporaneous view of the Neiye (“Inner Training”) chapter of the Guanzi where “the indescribability of the Dao leads to no extreme skeptical or ironic results, and does not lead to self-reflective criticisms or erasures of statements just made . . . Rather, it points unproblematically to another way in which the Dao can be ‘attained’; through psychophysical cultivation and stillness of the mind.”

If you’ve got this far, yet still wonder why it matters, I would simply suggest that in contrasting these two points of departure we are better able to understand the choice between them.

These were men who followed what is called the Way that is not a way, and this exchange of theirs is what is called the debate that is not spoken. Therefore, when virtue is resolved in the unity of the Way and words come to rest at the place where understanding no longer understands, we have perfection. The unity of the Way is something that virtue can never master; what understanding does not understand is something that debate can never encompass. To apply names in the manner of the Confucians and Mo-ists is to invite evil. The sea does not refuse the rivers that come flowing eastward into it - it is the perfection of greatness. The sage embraces all heaven and earth, and his bounty extends to the whole world, yet no one knows who he is or what family he belongs to. For this reason, in life he holds no titles, in death he receives no posthumous names. Realities do not gather about him, names do not stick to him - this is what is called the Great Man.~ Burton Watson translation ~

I suppose that the Great Man or Great Woman knows without knowing, understands that which cannot be understood. In this regard, I have never met a Great Man or Great Woman!

Our Christian sisters and brothers have quite rightfully begun to advocate for the personhood of every fertilized human egg; every zygote is precious in the eyes of God and deserves full constitutional protection under the law. Yet this clearly does not go far enough—every unfertilized egg is also precious, as is every unrealized sperm. They are, after all, each one a potential human being. Who are we then to deny their worth in the eyes of God?

This did not escape the notice of our blessed Church fathers, some of whom observed that every female menstrual cycle is in fact the crying out of an unborn child at its missed opportunity at personhood. This is an abominable sin, as they rightly pointed out. Women have a moral obligation to make use of every egg possible. Pregnancy is the holiest state that a woman can achieve. Men, as the natural and divinely mandated leaders of women, similarly have a moral obligation to insure that as many of their sperm as possible unite with the egg in the miraculous and holy event of conception.

Some cynics have responded that some eggs are unavoidably lost and many more sperm as well, and have suggested therefore, that their loss is of no great moral import. This comes from a failure to recognize the full consequences of Original Sin. Man is born in sin and lives with the consequences of that sin in every aspect of his existence. This is why life is a slow death. Are we not nevertheless morally obliged to prolong that life for as long as possible?

This understanding of the sanctity of every egg and every sperm necessarily leads us to the moral obligation to insure their full protection under the law. At the first signs of puberty every girl must be given to a husband to insure that as few eggs are lost as possible. Boys, who are not ready for the great responsibilities of fatherhood as are we mature men, must be watched at all times to ensure that they do not "cast their seed upon the ground" (the sin of Onan in Gen. 38:10) and should be severely punished should they be found to have done so. Involuntary night-time seminal emissions must be viewed as expressions of man's sinful nature, condemned as such, and public repentance and humiliation exacted. Women and girls, once impregnated, must be watched closely to insure that they do not in any way prejudice the health of the fetus, and all who do or are suspected of being potentially capable of doing so must be placed in institutions where they can be forced to properly fulfill their divinely mandated role as holy vessels for the propagation of the species. ("Go forth and multiply so as to fill the earth" is God's command!)

Ours is a great crusade against an increasingly demonic government that believes it has the right to impinge upon our God-given freedoms. Big government needs to be told to stay out of our lives and allow us to freely realize our religious principles. Those who refuse the will of the Lord shall be punished.

The one effective, true human nature (logos united with vitality), when it descends into the house of the Creative, divides into animus and anima. The animus is I the heavenly heart. It is of the nature of light; it is the power of lightness and purity. It is that which we have received from the great emptiness, that which is identical in form with the primordial beginning. The anima partakes of the nature of the dark. It is the energy of the heavy and the turbid; it is bound to the bodily fleshly heart. The animus loves life. The anima seeks death. All sensuous desires and impulses of anger are effects of the anima; itisthe conscious spirit which after death is nourished on blood, but which, during life, is in greatest distress. The dark returns to darkness and like things attract each other according to their kind. But the pupil understands how to distil the dark anima completely so that it transforms itself into pure light (yang).

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

Is an injustice eternal? Will the injustices of our day — and they are beyond counting — matter in a million years? A great injustice was perpetrated in Babylon three thousand years ago; does that matter today? Is there a storage and accounting of injustices in the fabric of Reality, a Great Book in Heaven? Will there be a Final Judgment? Or are all things past, and thus all things presently present, truly no-more? Can what was never before be ever after?

Is humanity comparable to nothing more (or less) than a great ant hill? Six years ago, in the depths of the Amazonian jungle, red ants attacked and dismembered some black ants; does it matter? Will there be an accounting? Of course not, we might say; ants are not morally accountable, but humans are. Really? To whom (God)? To what (karma)? For how long? For eternity?

Humans are morally accountable — to each other in our present; but how can we believe that it goes any further? Only if we insist on doing so; only if we insist on projecting our morality (and, let's face it, our immorality) onto Reality. Can we now care deeply about our present while eschewing this need to fix it to eternity? Can we walk two roads?

This, I believe, is something of the view from Dao — to see the narrow view in the light of the wider. Intraworldly mysticism does just that, without negating the narrow view. The narrow view is our myopic, human-centered, human-absorbed point of view; to be human is to have it. To deny it would be to deny our humanity. We are, each one, the center of our own universe; yet we know to allow that others are also the center of theirs; we take a wider, more inclusive, view while affirming the narrow. To do otherwise would be to negate not only all others, but ourselves, as well. Similarly, humanity sees itself as the center of its universe; can we allow that it, too, has an exceedingly narrow view? Can we allow vastness to cleanse us of our collective egoism and thereby open up to a more all-embracing, all-affirming point of view?

When Confucius visited Ch'u, the king of Ch'u ordered a toast. Sun-shu Ao came forward and stood with the wine goblet, while I-liao from south of the Market took some of the wine and poured a libation, saying, "[You have the wisdom of] the men of old, have you not? On this occasion perhaps you would speak to us about it."

Confucius said, "I have heard of the speech that is not spoken, though I have never tried to speak about it. Shall I take this occasion to speak about it now? I-liao from south of the Market juggled a set of balls and the trouble between the two houses was resolved. Sun-shu Ao rested comfortably, waving his feather fan, and the men of Ying put away their arms. I wish I had a beak three feet long!"~ Burton Watson translation ~

Talking often complicates matters. We try so hard to set concepts and definitions in stone and yet they float about on pillows of air. We come to an "agreement" and we both walk away with two completely different understandings of what we just agreed to!

In a recently released report about the Sandy Hook school shooting of last December, one of the revelations is that the shooter (Adam Lanza) possessed a video game called School Shooting. As reported by the Guardian, the game features "a character controlled by the player who enters a school and shoots students."

I am sure that some people will point to this particular game as being a cause of the tragedy. Other people will broaden the scope to say that all violent video games are part of the problem and, consequently, should be banned. Still others will point out that millions of people play violent video games and yet they don't commit heinous acts, so the problem obviously isn't the games themselves.

Where do I stand on the issue? Sort of in the middle.

I do think violent video games are part of the problem, but that doesn't mean that I believe they should be singled out. Violence permeates our society. Our federal government has a "shoot first, ask questions later" mentality. This perspective has trickled down to local police forces. Even ordinary citizens -- like George Zimmerman -- wrap themselves in the shoot first mantra.

Most of the top box office draws in the film industry employ varying degrees of violence to sell tickets. The same is true for television programs. Heck, a good deal of the most popular music these days is filled with violent themes. When you add in the amount of violence showcased in a great deal of the "hallowed" religious tracts from the Abrahamic religions, the whole thing ends up tied neatly with a bow!

Yes, a video game entitled School Shooting is vulgar, but so too are the violent themes that seem to worm their way into every nook, cranny and crevice of our lives. Banning one tiny element won't make that much difference at all.

But, besides this, there is the animus in which the spirit shelters. The animus lives in the daytime in the eyes; at night it houses in the liver. When living in the eyes, it sees; when housed in the liver, it dreams. Dreams are the wanderings of the spirit through all nine heavens and all nine earths. But whoever is in a dark and withdrawn mood on waking, and chained to his bodily form, is fettered by the anima. Therefore the concentration of the animus is brought about by the circulation of the light, and in this way the spirit is maintained, the anima subjugated, and consciousness cut off. The method used by the ancients for escaping from the world consisted in melting out completely the slag of darkness in order to return to the purely creative. This is nothing more than a reduction of the anima and a completion of the animus. And the circulation of the light is the magical means of reducing the dark, and gaining mastery over the anima. Even if the work is not directed towards bringing back the Creative, but confines itself to the magical means of the circulation of the light, it is just the light that is the Creative. By means of its circulation, one returns to the Creative. If this method is followed, plenty of seed-water will be present of itself; the spirit fire will be ignited, and the thought-earth will solidify and crystallize. And thus the holy fruit matures. The scarabaeus rolls his ball and in the ball there develops life as the result of the undivided effort of his spiritual concentration. If now an embryo can grow in manure, and shed its shells, why then should not the dwelling place of our heavenly heart also be able to create a body if we concentrate the spirit upon it?

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

Yearley's comparison of Stoicism and the "radical Chuang-tzu", between a Hellenistic philosophy of the early 'Christian era' and one of fourth century B.C.E. China, has special relevance despite their radically different milieus because the former in many ways reflects the transformation of the latter into the "conventional Chuang-tzu" of the 17th Chapter of the Zhuangzi. Like the author of that chapter, the Stoics advocated the use of the reasoning mind to respond to life's vicissitudes, accepting with equanimity what cannot be avoided. This is "conventional" in that it is essentially the default method of humanity generally; we take our minds as our teacher.

If we take our mind as our teacher, asks Zhuangzi, who can be said to be without a teacher? Some (though in diminishing numbers, I suspect) have understood this in a positive light — you will find your right path if you follow your heart-mind. At the core of Zhuangzi's philosophy, however, is the belief that this reliance on "the understanding consciousness" is the root cause of so much of our alienation from life itself. It is amazing how much Zhuangzi had a sense of that alienation which we tend to equate with 'modern' humanity beginning with the Enlightenment and ending in so-called "existential despair". But it had its precursors among the Greeks as well, of course; "Man is the measure of all things" is a formulaic response to the loss of our fixed and sure grounding in the gods.

What then can be our teacher? Zhuangzi suggests the life experience itself. But life has no reason, no identifiable ground. It is self-so; it just is as it is; it just happens. What life teaches us, therefore, is not a set of principles to follow, but rather not a teaching at all, but an invitation to return to the pre-cognitive and spontaneous flow of life's unfolding. This is an organic affirmation of life. And this movement from the primacy of the mediating mind to the re-integration with the life experience is the heart of Zhuangzi's mysticism. (It has nothing to do with reconnecting with the gods or Dao or the Source or Universal Mind.)

How? I don't know. Only I know it is a dangerous thing to prescribe some one method. Life does not.

It is important to understand that Zhuangzi does not abandon reason, but rather simply suggests its limits, and identifies how that in allowing it to become the dominant force in our interface with the life experience, we have severely limited our ability to experience life more fully.

Finally, it may be helpful to understand our human condition in an evolutionary context. Our “fall” might easily be described as “up”; self-consciousness has happened and is wonderful. But it has come at a price; being a self is a great privilege and in no way need be disparaged, but just as walking upright brings with it a downside (bad backs), so too does being a self-conscious being. That we dwell in our rationalizing mind is accidental; just like everything else.

Tzu-ch'i of Nan-po sat leaning on his armrest, staring up at the sky and breathing. Yen Ch'eng-tzu entered and said, "Master, you surpass all other things! Can you really make the body like a withered tree and the mind like dead ashes?"

"Once I lived in a mountain cave. At that time, T'ien Ho came to pay me one visit and the people of the state of Ch'i congratulated him three times. I must have had hold of something in order for him to find out who I was; I must have been peddling something in order for him to come and buy. If I had not had hold of something, then how would he have been able to find out who I was? If I had not been peddling something, then how would he have been able to buy? Ah, how I pitied those men who destroy themselves! Then again, I pitied those who pity others; and again, I pitied those who pity those who pity others. But all that was long ago."~ Burton Watson translation ~

Okay, this is another one of those tales in which the main thesis eludes me. Sorry, but I don't have anything to offer.

With a title like that, you might think that I'm going to tell you that I've decided to take up surfing! Those aren't the kind of waves I'm referring to. For one thing, I'm too old and feeble to learn a sport such as that. For another, unlike many other coastal communities around the world, our weather and water temperatures are not that conducive to surfing. This is not to say that no one surfs off of our coasts, but the folks that do so are hardy souls...and a bit nuts too!

No, the kind of waves I may be riding soon are air waves. Ocean Shores is blessed with a low-power FM radio station, KOSW-LP. It's an all-volunteer effort that will celebrate its 10th anniversary next year.

Like many nonprofit groups, the station was launched with great fanfare. For the first few years, there were plenty of volunteers and the future looked bright. However, once the initial enthusiasm began to wane, the station lost a lot of its momentum. While a small and dedicated core of volunteers and supporters remain, their small number greatly limits what the station could accomplish.

What they desperately need is new blood and I need a local project to occupy my time when I'm not writing posts and administering this blog. So, maybe it is fortuitous that I landed here now. I suppose we'll see.

The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic, seed-water, spirit-fire, and thought-earth: these three. What is seed-water? It is the true, one energy of former heaven (eros). Spirit fire is the light (logos). Thought-earth is the heavenly heart of the middle dwelling (intuition). Spirit-fire is used for the foundation. Ordinary men make their bodies through thoughts. The body is not only the seven foot-tall outer body. In the body is the anima. The anima adheres to consciousness, in order to affect it. Consciousness depends for its origin on the anima. The anima is yin (feminine), it is the substance of consciousness. As long as this consciousness is not interrupted, it continues to beget from generation to generation, and the changes of form of the anima and the transformations of substance are unceasing.

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

All of what I have thus far said of Yearley's article "The Perfected Person in the Radical Chuang-tzu" (Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu) may be bunk; I may have failed to understand him. The essential thing, however, is to allow the growth of clarity regarding one's own point of view, and this, it seems to me, ultimately requires decoupling one's perspective from the negation of some other. The point is to abide in affirmation, not negation; but as long as we define what 'is' by what 'is not' we remain coupled to the latter, and we have failed to find "the center of the circle". From the center of the circle, at the Axis of Dao where all things are equalized, where right and wrong "are no longer coupled as opposites", one is somehow able to embrace every expression and to understand how all our opinions, for all their mattering, do not matter at all. This, I think, is something of what Zhuangzi is about, but since I have not experienced it, I cannot really understand it.

Life and its dialectic nevertheless go on, and thus do I.

Let's return then to Yearley's thesis, forgetting that he has perhaps mistakenly taken the fruit ("going along with the present 'this'") for the root (the transformative experience that makes this possible without the conscious application of a 'principle' ["It is all just a matter of going along with the present 'this'. To do this without knowing it, and not because you have defined it as 'right', is called 'the Dao'" (2:23; Ziporyn)]). The ataraxia of the Stoic, he tells us, is the application of reason to one's circumstances in order to free one from unnecessary distress. In the case of grief, "he grieves but sees his grief as wrong when he takes a larger view. Knowledge dispels sorrow, reason diffuses emotions." It is easy to see how Zhuangzi's position can become just this, as it seems to have become in the 17th Chapter of the Zhuangzi. We are, after all, typically bound by our “understanding consciousness”, as Zhuangzi tells us, and thus automatically default to interfacing with the world through the mediation of reason. But Zhuangzi, as Yearley points out, takes a radically different position.

“Most important, the crucial notion is not that the mind dispels emotion by its possession of a general perspective. Rather the crucial notion is that the mind holds to and lets go of events as they arise, pass before you, and disappear. . . . a complex mixture of attachment and detachment. A total involvement with each moment and enjoyment of it combine with a detachment from the moment once it passes and a lack of desire that it return.” I have quoted him at length because I think he puts it quite well. This simultaneity of attachment and detachment is another way of saying we “walk two roads”, as is the term “intraworldly mysticism”.

As a cautionary note, however, it needs to be seen how this formula can also easily become just another “general perspective” to be applied as, I believe, Yearley goes on to do. There is no “radical Chuang-tzu” without his mysticism, and that obviates the need for the application of ‘principles’.

The king of Wu, boating on the Yangtze, stopped to climb a mountain noted for its monkeys. When the pack of monkeys saw him, they dropped what they were doing in terror and scampered off to hide in the deep brush. But there was one monkey who, lounging about nonchalantly, picking at things, scratching, decided to display his skill to the king. When the king shot at him, he snatched hold of the flying arrows with the greatest nimbleness and speed. The king thereupon ordered his attendants to hurry forward and join in the shooting, and the monkey was soon captured and killed. The king turned to his friend Yen Pu-i and said, "This monkey, flouting its skill, trusting to its tricks, deliberately displayed its contempt for me - so it met with this end. Take warning from it! Ah - you must never let your expression show arrogance toward others! "

When Yen Pu-i returned, he put himself under the instruction of Tung Wu, learning to wipe the expression from his face, to discard delight, to excuse himself from renown - and at the end of three years everyone in the state was praising him.~ Burton Watson translation ~

Arrogance typically leads to some sort of downfall. When a person becomes to full of himself, he tends to behave carelessly and carelessness leads down the path of ruin.

After our moving sale in South Bend ended, we did something drastic: we cut-off our DirecTV service. Here in Ocean Shores, we are going a different route. Instead of cable or satellite TV, we signed up with Hulu and then purchased a Roku digital streaming device. Della can still watch most of her network TV shows -- albeit the day AFTER broadcast.

Me? While I've added channels like Free Speech TV, The Young Turks and Democracy Now! to my line-up, I have also rediscovered classic television shows from my youth of the early to mid 60s. I've been working my way through the entire episode collection of My Favorite Martian and The Time Tunnel. While a good deal of the acting seems a bit hokey by today's standards, I think both programs stand up well to the test of time.

The lower heart moves like a strong, powerful commander who despises the heavenly rule because of his weakness, and has usurped the leadership in affairs of state. But when the primal castle can be fortified and defended, then it is as is a strong and wise ruler sat upon the throne. The eyes start the light circulating like two ministers at the right and left who support the ruler with all their might. When rule in the center is thus in order, all those rebellious heroes will present themselves with lances reversed ready to take orders.

Translators of The Secret of the Golden Flower are Richard Wilhelm and Cary F. Baynes. If you missed any posts in this series, please utilize the Golden Flower label below.

Yearley (in Experimental Essays on Chuang-tzu) describes Zhuangzi's mysticism primarily in terms of the sage's ability to positively respond to and engage with every event as it arises, while simultaneously releasing events as they pass. The world is ever-transforming (hua) and the sage fully harmonizes with this apparent reality. This is suggested in the imagery of the mind like a mirror: "The Consummate Person uses his mind like a mirror, rejecting nothing, welcoming nothing; responding but not storing. Thus he can handle all things without harm." (7:14; Ziporyn) I have suggested that this is a fruit of the mystical experience, not the experience itself. I have also suggested that the extreme position to which this leads Yearley in his interpretation of Zhuangzi is a consequence of his mistaking the fruit for the root.

Yearley offers this story as an example of the sage's behavior: He is walking in the forest with his wife, whom he loves most dearly, when a tree falls on her and smashes her to pulp. At first he is shocked and grieved, but almost immediately he releases these emotions and instead wonders at the beauty of blood as it mingles with the leaves and the interesting patterns created by shattered bone. How did we arrive at this? I can only imagine that in having taken a behavior which has its roots in organic and in-articulable experience and having codified it with reason, and having made it into a principle to be applied, we will be led to such an extreme.

What is missing here is the "ironic": the grief that is also not grief. This is neither grief alone, nor not-grief alone. It is both simultaneously, however incompatible. What is missing here is the root mystical experience that gives spontaneous rise to our responses to events, instead of the application of prescribed behaviors.

It is true that Zhuangzi released himself from the extremes of grief at the death of his wife and instead of wailing, sang as he beat out a tune on the bottom of a tub, but this does not mean he did not miss her still. It is just that he also had the larger view, the view that allowed him to grieve without despair.

I am reminded of the Zen story where an esteemed master who, while being killed by bandits, screamed like a banshee. A novice, having seen and heard this, is shaken in his esteem and suggests the master should have behaved otherwise. A nearby monk raps him on the head and says, “Fool, he screamed because he wanted to.” What is intraworldly about Zhuangzi’s mysticism is that it enables our full participation in the full gamut of human expression while never being ruled by any of it.

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Hunting is not allowed within the boundaries of Ocean Shores and so this approximate 7 miles long peninsula has remained home for a variety of wild critters. While sitings of bears and cougars happen very infrequently, raccoons and coyotes are often seen. But the one wild animal that dominates our area is the black-tailed deer. They are everywhere and I mean that almost literally.

Late last night in a field near our apartment complex, Jaz and I practically walked up the back of one. We came within a few feet of it before we realized it! Today, on a drive down Ocean Shores Blvd., I counted over 50 deer in less than 3 miles. Because they are protected AND some people feed them, most of the deer are not scared of people. This is not to suggest that the majority will eat out of your hand, but you generally can come within a few feet of them before they saunter away.

Of course, this lack of fear of humans can be quite deadly. As long as the deer remain within the confines of the City of Ocean Shores, they are safe. However, the moment they cross those invisible boundary lines, they can be shot (in season). I'm sure the deer do not comprehend this distinction!

We were promised a better life in our home countries, where we were told that privatizing water and electricity will make things run more efficiently

Instead the quality remained almost the same and the price was increased until it became an unaffordable luxury

Some corporations are more efficient than government, but their motivation is not the health or the well being of the people, it's only about profit, everything else, their image, their human resources, their public relations, only exist to protect the reality behind it

Once upon a time, we were told that nationalization would prevent growth by limiting competition, that our countries were nothing without the companies that invested in us and so they privatized everything, everything in our country was owned by people that had no connection to our culture, by those who never had our interests at heart, they didn't care about our survival or well being, they just wanted to turn a profit by raping our land, by exploiting our people, our industry and our resources

They took everything we built and made it theirs, first by creating racism to justify slavery, building the capital for capitalism and then when they gave us what they call liberty, everything we had was still owned by them, our governments told us that socialism was the real enemy and that we would have freedom, but the foreign powers and corporations were the ones with real freedom

The freedom to take all the wealth generated by our work and our land and give us only a small percentage of the scraps from the table

Their lust for power and their greed drove them to betray not only us but themselves and the word of their own God

(Open your eyes before you die)

And while some used missionaries and donations to off set this abuse, other countries and companies were blatant with their crimes, using war, disease and sanctions that killed millions, they supported corrupt governments that were almost like the old slave masters in their oppression of the people, because their loyalty was to those who enable them, enstored them and kept them in power, they became the bastard children of American industry, kleptocracy, government's of thievery, they protected the corporations and went to war against their own people to preserve those profits

The puppet rulers were given billions of US tax dollars to fund civil wars, right wing death squads, execute political dissidents, sympathetic clergy and even overthrow democratically elected governments and so the age of revolution began again, they painted it as godless terrorist versus the free world and the market

But the free market has never been free, because the market does not regulate itself, it is manipulated like a puppet and it survives because of its image, destroy the image and the enemy will die

Such is the same in the rap industry, but the major label super powers treat the underground like the 3rd world, when they need new assets, new artist to prostitute or sign and put on a shelf to use their songs

When they needed new concepts, music and publishing to steal from the producers, they came to the underground, to the 3rd world, they took our culture, our property and our industry and our resources, even using our own people to help them exploit us

But behind the mask of efficiency, they claimed that we need to succeed, they're no better than us, they're economic advertising was always a lie, a few got rich but most were given an illusion of wealth, almost as if it was designed for failure

Opportunity comes at the price of soul and the music, so remember what they are underneath the fancy architecture, glittering rented jewelery, the cars, the IMF loans, the seeds with suicide genes, 20 year contracts and oil bloody money

Build your defenses my independent brothers and sisters, they'll stop at nothing to get what they want, they paint the 3rd world, underground, as savage and backward, but the super powers are no less corrupt, they've just learned to disguise it better, cause they fix elections too, they embezzle tax money, they go to war for resources, they fund terrorism for their own benefit, and when there's enough at stake... history's taught us that they'll even assassinate their own president.